The Disease of War.

[B]The Disease of Permanent War.[/B]

…. Massive military spending in this country, climbing to nearly $1 trillion a year and consuming half of all discretionary spending, has a profound social cost. Bridges and levees collapse. Schools decay. Domestic manufacturing declines. Trillions in debts threaten the viability of the currency and the economy. The poor, the mentally ill, the sick and the unemployed are abandoned. Human suffering, including our own, is the price for victory. …

… Most legal analysts around the world, including U.S. State Department jurists, view the construction of settlements in the West Bank as a violation of international law relating to war and conquered territories. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits states from moving their own citizens into conquered land. …

… Oren, a historian from the Shalem Center whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tapped for Israel’s top diplomatic post, described a country rotten to the core, riddled by everything from drug dealing to white slavery, from money laundering to illegal arms trading. …

… Netanyahu is in a bind: He can’t afford to anger the Americans over the settlements, but stands to lose a great deal among his supporters in Likud if he does take action. And so he will attempt to remove the settlements – not from the West Bank but from the center of discussion, using the usual method of establishing a committee. He will try to find a formula that will assuage the United States without declaring a freeze on settlement construction that could lose him the coalition. It will be interesting to see whether Obama opts for confrontation now or decides to go along at Netanyahu’s pace.